Wuest: Organ Donations Could Save More Lives

December 29, 1985|By Jay Hamburg of the Sentinel Staff

The Orlando Sentinel: For six years before your transplant you had been unable to work. What was the toughest thing about that experience?

Harry Wuest: Watching other people do things that I used to be able to do. Watching people do things like play tennis and not being able to play sports with my boys. I was a fine athlete. I played college basketball, and I played basketball in the service.

Q: What was the state of your health at the time of the transplant?

A: I was at the end. I had caught pneumonia and I was confined first to the house for a couple of weeks, the first two weeks in April, and then wound up in Florida Hospital. My doctor came up about the 20th of April. He told me the only way out of this was a heart transplant.

Q: What was your reaction when he first told you that?

A: Even though I was real sick, it still didn't go over real well.

Q: This was despite the fact you could almost see the end yourself?

A: I had known the end was coming for six months from looking at my X- rays.

Q: Did they tell you where the heart came from?

A: I know exactly where it came from. I got a letter from the donor's father. It came from a 19-year-old Georgia Tech student.

Q: A boy killed in an automobile accident?

A: Yes.

Q: What did the father say?

A: He wanted to let me know about his son. When his son got his driver's permit at 15, he put down that he wanted to be an organ donor. His parents were horrified. But when he discussed it with them, he convinced them that that's what he wanted to do.

Q: What was the boy like?

A: It's almost too good to be true if you had read this letter. He was a sophomore at Georgia Tech. He was very involved with his church, and he exercised just about every night of the week -- he was a very healthy kid. It sounded like he was healthy emotionally too. The father was very proud of his son. The parents are not much older than I am. His letter said to me that for the father and the mother to be able to take that boy off life-support systems and donate his organs was a hell of an act of love on their part.

Q: How did the boy's father come to know who you were?

A: It's pretty hard not to because of the fact my face and name were plastered all over the paper. I was only the third transplant done in Atlanta. Q: The father figured it out on his own? Some people don't want to know where their organs came from.

A: Initially, I didn't either. But I got it the letter a month later. It got into my mail and nobody caught it and I happened to open it up and I looked at it. I realized what I was reading and I just kept on reading. It was real heartwarming for me to read what the father had written. Very obviously the father loved his son. He was proud of his son. I wrote back to them and let them know what I planned on doing, how I felt, how grateful I was.

Q: That's really an unusual experience.

A: But I think it's a good experience worth having, that's for sure.

Q: That leads into one of the things you wanted to talk about, which was the necessity of getting people to donate organs.

A: Yes, the necessity is there. I watched seven people die in Atlanta waiting, and every one of them died for very simple reasons: There were no hearts available for them. As a matter of fact, one fellow died right in my apartment. We were getting ready to watch movies one night. When we get accepted into this program, we are real sick people. We have less than six months to go; some obviously have a lot less than that. It doesn't take much for the failing heart just to let go.

Q: Had you become friends with the man you were talking about?

A: He was over at my apartment. He had moved out of the hospital and got an apartment of his own. Another transplant patient and I, we were going to go to the movies and Miles was going to come with us. He was just sitting on my couch and he keeled over.

Q: How long were you in the hospital before you were allowed to live near the hospital?

A: I was in the hospital for a month after surgery, and then they sent me to another part of the hospital -- it's an outpatient place.

Q: How is your health now?

A: I have my blood drawn weekly and I have biopsies every three weeks.

Q: At this point, are you free to engage in physical activities?

A: They are still keeping me on the leash. It is a new program, and the biopsies are a lot more frequent than in other places. But I can pretty much do what I want if I use good judgment.

Q: What activities are you allowed to do?

A: I lift weights a few nights a week. I got the weights right here in my apartment. I tried to play basketball, but one of the problems I've got comes from the fact that I was sick for so many years and the anti-rejection medicine attacks your large muscles. Right now, my leg and my back are still weak, so I can't run. I can, but not real far and not real fast.

Q: Are you working?

A: I have registered with some employment agencies and I have had temporary work.

Q: So you are called out as a fill-in accountant. When do you think you can go back at it full time?

A: Sometime after the first of the year.

Q: Looking over this past year, what has it meant to you?

A: I think what is really important is that a heart transplant means more than just another day on this Earth. I had less than two weeks left to live. I've had about 6 1/2 months extra now. If I drop dead tomorrow, I'll say thank God for what I had. I think the biggest thing that people have to see is that when a person has a transplant that they go back to living their productive life. Now, here is a guy who couldn't do anything for so many years, and who is now looking forward to getting a job and to taking the CPA exam. Maybe I'm a little bit older, but at least I've got the opportunity to at least attempt these things now. It is going back to living a normal life.